SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Crappy film

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Its lead virtue is to be more than a good comedy. a film about life. and its choices. about two men, in Tigreville. and about the result of that meeting who could change everything. a film about decisions, past strangers and...Spain. nothing new, but all useful in deep sense. because it is a simple film. about simple people. and about the fundamental meanings of existence. and sure, a fine motif for see it remains the presence of Gabin and Belmondo and their almost total seductive performances.

French films often focus on things that are really quite different from the English/American scene. They're a lot about dialog, attitude, and big(mouthed) iconic protagonists - often less about an obvious moral at the end. This film is neither really a comedy nor a drama, it's like that perfect nuance between the two and borrows from both in a very typically French kind of cynical/blasé way.Instead of a great big moral as most films around the world usually have which they culminate towards, this one has rather a theme that is omnipresent throughout the developments. It's more like an ongoing element of both lead characters' conscience, or rather subconscious - as the synopsis states: the desire to travel. That irresistible urge to discover or rather rediscover a place exotic, festive and foreign; foreign to the boring old daily, routine life.As referenced in the first line of this review, French films are best when the dialog is best and this one has the right quality for the ambitions of the story and Gabin and Belmondo both do a very good job, Gabin especially as he seems to have been that very character at some point in his life, understands him so well. Such lines as (speaking to his wife, -paraphrasing): "Suzanne tu n'as que des qualités, mais tu m'emmerdes !" - so French in spirit, and a sentence so heavy with significance as it pertains to the sheltered, redundant gentrified "real" life.Interesting, well acted out, very good dialog, very well paced and filled up: 7.5/10. My own criticism: perhaps the "dream life" is hinted at too much where the film settles for carrying out the events in the plot while not further exploring that strong element of abstract emotion that remains merely underlying and implied.

Despite his detestation of the New Wave (you got that one right, Jean)Gabin worked well with a new generation of actors, specifically Alain Delon and, as here, Jean-Paul Belmondo who was a genuine product of le nouvelle vague. This is a story of unlikely male friendship yet it is light years short of Il Postino in terms of intensity, it uses the unlikely bonding to generate laughs but L'Emmerdeur or virtually any of Francis Weber's other male bonding titles - Le Chevre, Les Comperes, Tais- Toi - leave it dead in the water. And yet it works, it weaves its spell, spins its web and we succumb gratefully. Of course Belmondo's sole representative of the nouvelle vague is hopelessly outnumbered not just by Gabin himself (even if by himself he is worth ALL the new waveleteers put together) but by the wonderful Suzanne Flon, Noel Roquevert and Gabriele Dorziat albeit in a cameo, all veterans of real French film making. All in all it's a joyous experience laced with a beguiling charm.

The good-looking Belmondo is a wonder in this fresh and lively movie:inventiveness, intoxication,agility,fearlessness, heartiness,fervency.He and Gabin give the action an almost dreamily dimension,when they kick up a row.They put to rout their fellow citizens with fireworks.The unflinching Gabin makes a rotund role,he acts GOOD-HUMOUREDLY, finely,unerringly.His character is a madcap fantasy man,a hot-spur.Belmondo is unequaled in providing cinematographic pleasure.And "Un Singe ..." offers copious Belmondo mastership.A provincial innkeeper is thrilled to find a mate in the fond of the bottle stranger who puts up at his inn.The stranger (Belmondo!) is merry , refined, nimble,spontaneous, youthful, suave.The two have an allied in the shopkeeper Landru,a quaint, twisted man who sells old things together with obsolete histories.Un singe en Hiver is a funny,light fantasy.The humor is mild and gentle.The characters are entirely fictitious,unrealistic.The situation is purely fanciful (otherwise,the plot is conventional,the poetry is cheap,gooey and low,the "wisdom" is fake).It shows what is hardening , narrow, smothering, stifling, in the provincial way of life,and also suggests an alternative.The movie lives by the performances given by Gabin and Belmondo.Belmondo is in fine fettle,unimaginably good in his role as a dreamy drunk and as a gourmet.He is as mad as a March hare.Un singe en Hiver is not great cinema,not a 10/10 movie;but it is entertaining and mild,jovial and nicely done.And,above all,it offers one of the great, unhesitating, fragrant,fulfilled,graceful, unexampled,frolicsome, freely done Belmondo roles.Nonetheless,I think the movie is a little overrated by some."Un Singe ..." is one of the few important shows about dreaminess (though not on the same level as "Barfly" and "Days of Wine and Roses " ).It gets a fairy-like,ONEIRICAL thrill,suave,tender,delicate.My favorite Belmondo shows are Pierrot Le Fou (1965) ,À bout De soufflé ,L' Homme De Rio,La Sirène Du Mississipi.